Prästänkan

Over the mountain wander Sofren and Mari. Sofren is a student of theology come to apply for the vacant position of parson in this rural Norwegian village. Mari is his fiancée, but not yet his wife because her father won't allow it until he becomes a real parson. Luckily for him, his two competitors from Copenhagen aren't particularly up to the task. The first looks like a cross between John Lennon and Bill Gates and bores his audience to sleep, so much so that even the man tasked with keeping everyone awake drops off; and the other is a bloated fool who keeps them amused only because Sofren has stuck a feather to the back of his head.

So Sofren it is: the five bearded elders tasked with the decision don't have much of a task after all, given that he's young and dynamic and can think on his feet. However, there's a catch, for there must always be a catch. The local custom is that the parson's widow comes with the job. This wasn't for any religious reason, merely a practical one because someone has to take care of her, after all, but this particular parson's widow, Dame Margarete Pedersdotter, has outlasted the previous three parsons only to be handed over each time to their successors 'like a piece of furniture'.

And just as Sofren had no problem outsmarting his rivals, who run for the hills the moment they see Dame Margarete anyway, the parson's widow outsmarts Sofren. Eager to retain her position running the parson's house, she persuades him subtly to propose. There's mention that she may be a witch but she really accomplishes it with a herring and a bottle of schnapps. So Sofren becomes the parson and Dame Margarete becomes the parson's wife once more, mistress of her whole domain. And with this setup, with Mari introduced into the mix as Sofren's sister rather than his fiancée, naturally hilarity ensues.

Well hilarity is a strong term, given that this is a Swedish silent film from 1920 and a Carl Theodor Dreyer movie to boot, but it's a lot closer to hilarity than I'd have ever imagined for one of his films. I've seen a lot of them, having been utterly stunned by The Passion of Joan of Arc and fascinated into finding as much of the rest of his work that I could. This was the second film Dreyer directed, but the eighth of his fourteen feature length movies for me. It's the first to invoke laughter, which comes about mostly in a subtle way but with some stooping to pantomime, such as the scenes where Sofren prances around in an elaborate Satan suit after he becomes convinced that his wife is a witch.

It's constructed well, with strong performances and memorable characters, varied shots and varied expectations. It looks good, whether inside or out, and there's a lot of use of the common silent film masking technique that turns the screen into a small circle to highlight what we should be looking at. As would fit a story built around a folk custom, there's a great deal here that speaks to customs and folklore, from dances to rituals to beliefs. Quite which Scandinavian culture or cultures this applies to, I'm not sure, given that it's a Swedish film set in Norway but based on a Danish story, but they're fascinating.

And backing up Dreyer's direction, Dreyer being a man who controlled his films as surely as Dame Margarete controls her household, are a number of memorable performances. Einar Röd plays Sofren as something of an imp. We rarely see him in church, this being one of the least religious religious films I've ever seen. Instead we watch him try all sorts of hare brained schemes to try to see his Mari, always coming up short but learning something in the process, there very much being a lesson here in and amidst the comedy. Greta Almroth is a wholesome but frustrated Mari, reminding a little of Elsa Lanchester.

Best of all is Hildur Carlberg as Dame Margarete, dominant throughout but always human. Born as far back as 1843, she was 76 when she made this film, her third and last. With a memorable face with many lines showing her age and a memorable gait that would have made her a prime candidate for a major role in a zombie movie, it's sad that she wouldn't make any more. She died two months before this film was released. I wonder if they nailed a horseshoe above her door and sprinkled linseed oil on the ground to ensure she didn't come back to haunt her house.

Prästänkan (literal translation of title: The Parson's Widow).

The Parson's Widow is significant for two reasons– It is one of the very few national romantic films, and it's one of the very first films to make extensive use of locations.

National romanticism was a 19th century movement that glorified pure hearted, independent farmers (as opposed to the aristocrats) and looked to the hinterlands as a source of pure culture and moral inspiration. It was particularly influential in Norway, the film's location.

As The Parson's Widow begins, Søfren, a divinity student, is offered a position in a rural parish¬– provided he marries the parson's elderly widow. He accepts, despite his betrothal to Mari, whom he passes off as his sister. This theme could exist only in a land where poverty and hunger were facts of life.

Modern audiences may find The Parson's Widow overly moralistic and sentimental. It has a 19th century feel– owing more to romantics like Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson than to more modern novelists like Knut Hamsun, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1920, the year the film was made. At that point, national romanticism was on its way out.

The story has a few supernatural overtones, but this is no horror film. In The Parson's Widow, the fantastic elements originate from folk beliefs and function primarily as cultural references.

Set in an indefinite past, The Parson's Widow makes extensive use of locations at a time when few filmmakers ventured beyond studio doors. It idealizes rural life in a way that anticipates Robert Flaherty's Man of Aran. And, like Flaherty's film, The Parson's Widow meticulously recreates practices that were rapidly disappearing.

The opening scenes were shot at Garmo stavkirke (stave church) in Maihaugen– the open air museum in Lillehammer, Norway. The farmstead scenes are probably shot at the same place, and the older extras would have been the last generation to learn the crafts they demonstrate as part of daily life.

People today will view The Parson's Widow primarily because it is an early film of director Carl Theodore Dreyer. But this is no beginner's work. Beautiful composition, expressive lighting, and obsessive attention to detail are signature marks of the director who gave us The Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr. The Parson's Widow stands as a minor masterpiece in its own right, but the romanticism is unlikely to resonate with today's audiences.

In order to take on the previous incumbent's living, a young clergyman has also to take on the deceased man's widow, which is a trifle inconvenient as said parson is in love with another. The parson in question is in also competition with two other 'academic' types who are treated with scorn and ridicule due to the quality (or lack of it) of their sermons. What starts off rather cruelly, with the young lovers waiting for the old woman to die, develops into a moving human story, although it does flag a little in spots. The latter scenes of the widow saying 'good-bye' to her surroundings and people when she feels she is to die soon is particularly moving and powerful. Ironically, life imitated art as Hildur Carlberg, who played the widow, died shortly afterwards, though several of her listed films are fortunately still around. Mathilde Nielsen, who played the tyrannical nurse in Dreyer's Master of the House, plays one of the widow's servants.

Certainly recommended to those fearing an hour or so with Mr Dreyer to be an austere and dreary prospect, this film also has an admirable period feel to it, though some of this is perhaps due to the use of unfamiliar (to me, at least) faces.

I do not know if Dreyer's first feature, "The President" was a big hit, to speculate if he had strong doubts about what his next films would be. In any case, it did not take long before he started shooting again, for the next year he released "Leaves Out of the Book of Satan" and next "The Parson's Widow", a production made and financed in Sweden. The story tells how a young man, when selected as the new parson of a community, marries his predecessor's old widow (who claims her right to do so), but brings along his own fiancée to live with them, making her pass as his sister. There is opportunism on both the parson's and the widow's sides, but this being a comedy these matters are treated lightly, as are eluded reflections on the options we may have in old age or youth, when facing the possibility of losing everything, as in the widow's case, or the shaping of a career and a happy life, in the young man's. Yet this is a strange comedy, for melancholy is always present, mainly reflected on the old but still beautiful and dignified face of actress Hildur Carlberg; and if it is true that Dreyer was not intent on making an ethnographic treatise, one of the most interesting aspects of his film is the portrait of rural settings, customs and rites, as religious sermons, feasts, weddings and funerals. If you ask me I prefer "The President" to this film, but it was a firm step in the filmography of the creator of "The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc", "Vampyr" and "Ordet".

Prästänkan / The Parson's Widow (1920) : Brief Review -

A pathbreaking romance with a lesson of goodwill easily makes into my top 5 films of Carl Theodor Dreyer. Having seen all the acclaimed works of Carl Theodor Dreyer, be it Danish or Swedish, I can easily say that The Parson's Widow makes it into my top 5 films (if not top 3) by the legendary director. All my top favourite Dreyer films belong to the talkie era: "Vampyr" (1932), "Vredens Dag" (1943) and "Order" (1955), except for his best work ever, "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928), which was a silent movie. Prästänkan does not beat Joan's passionate story and Ordet, but finds equal praise as the other two films. The Parson's Widow is a weird romance. I think weird is an insulting word, so let me call it pathbreaking. Hal Ashby made "Harold and Maude" (1971) after 51 years, where a teenager falls in love with an old lady, and the latter dies in the end. Now imagine seeing the same stuff in a Swedish film made in 1920. A young graduate marries a lady of his grandmother's age to win the love of his girlfriend. How weirdly pathbreaking and fascinating idea it was! And the climax has a great deal of goodwill to leave you with a positive message and tender sentiments. The film is based on a story called Prestekonen by Kristofer Janson, and I don't know nothing about that. I just followed Dreyer's film adaptation and loved it. Einar Röd as Söfren is good, but seems over-expressive on many occasions. One such example was that feeling dizzy scene. But I liked his final quote, "We owe her a great debt, Mari. She taught you to keep a good home and she taught me to be an honourable man." Any real man would love that. Hildur Carlberg as Dame Margarete is a show stealer here, while Greta Almroth poses cutely as an innocent girlfriend. Writer and director Carl Theodor Dreyer has done a fabulous job of making one of the most daring and beautiful love stories that stands the test of time, even today. His most significant achievement during his early career.

RATING - 7.5/10*

By - #samthebestest.